The Piper (version 2)
by animegirl19791
Summary: Another version of the story of Hette and the Piper. This is the first story I have ever finished and I must confess I am proud of it. Darker undertones in this than in the first one. Please read.


**The Piper**

_**Author's Note:**__ So, this is the second version of my re-telling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I have to say, I prefer this version, as it has more closure. Please review and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it._

This is a story about a little girl.

Her name was Henrietta Adelaide Rosenberg, but since everyone she knew called her Hette, I shall do the same. Hette was four years old and very pale, with inky black hair and eyes the colour of rainwater. She was good, quiet, and never got under Nanny Elsie's feet when she was tidying the nursery. She was everything a little girl should be.

Hette lived in a town called Hamelin, on the river Weser in the north-west of Germany. Her parents were quite well-known about town – her father was an advisor to the Mayor himself – but since they were so busy almost all of the time, she did not get to see him much. Her mother was a bust socialite, who never had the time for silly things like bedtime and stories. If Hette ever tripped or woke from a nightmare, it was Nanny Elsie who soothed her frets and wiped her tears. While it did make Hette sad sometimes not to see Mama or Papa as often as she would have liked to, she would remind herself that she was a good girl, and would instead play with her toys in the nursery, or draw pictures with her best pencils, or simply sit in the garden if the weather was fine and listen to the birds. There was a large maple tree in the garden, which she would settle herself under on a blanket with two of her dolls and a tea-set. There was even a cat that prowled through the grass some days, chasing the butterflies and investigating under the bushes that lined the fences. She named him Heimrich, and he was often her only companion in the long summer afternoons when Nanny Elsie was cleaning inside and Mama and Papa were away on business.

It was a cold, still night in late October when Hette first heard the music of the Piper. The bell in the village clock-tower had long struck midnight, but Hette was not yet asleep – her large eyes staring out of the open window at the sky above, hoping she might see a shooting star if she stayed awake long enough. At first, she thought the haunting melody to be simply a trick of the wind through the mountains, but as it grew louder, she realised that it was not. Clutching one of her dolls to her chest, she wriggled out of bed and padded in her nightgown to the sill of the window. She had to stand on her toybox to see clearly into the street below, lit by the moon like a silver torch.

At first, Hette did not see him – his cloak was the colour of the shadows and the moonlight and the patchwork of the cobbled street he walked on. It was not until he was directly below Hette's bedroom window that she saw him properly. He was taller than Papa – even taller than Ferdinand Bauer who collected the apples from old Herr Reinhardt's orchard – and so thin she might have mistaken him for a lamp-post. His hood was pulled low over his face, and both his hands were raised before him, as though he were playing some sort of instrument. It was from him that the mysterious music was playing. While it was certainly not a happy tune, there was an ethereal quality about it that intrigued little Hette. She kept her eyes on him as he moved past the front gate, until he was almost out of sight completely, when suddenly he stopped, just outside Herr and Frau Buckholtz's house at number sixty-eight. There, he lowered his arms and slowly revolved to face the front of the house. She could still see no facial features beneath his hood, but Hette got the impression that he was looking intently at the top window. He then lifted his arms and that haunting melody drifted down the moonlit street back to Hette. This time, she could almost hear words in the melancholy notes:

"_Come. . . follow. . . follow. . ."_

Somehow Hette knew these words were not meant for her, but she felt a certain pull all the same – a strange urge to sneak downstairs and join the mysterious figure in the street below, to follow him wherever he would lead.

A icy chill spread to the tips of Hette's fingers, making her shiver. She suddenly felt deathly afraid, and almost withdrew her gaze from between the curtains, but for the strange, silvery glow that had appeared at the top window of the Buckholtzes' house, and she found herself unable to tear away. It was not until the silver shadow descended to the street below to stand beside the Piper that Hette could make out its features. Why, it was old Frau Buckholtz herself! Her skin was no longer pale pink but the purest of silver, and her long hair floated about her like spider-silk. She did not seem afraid of the piper, and seemed almost relieved to take his arm as he turned and began to walk slowly back up the street towards where Hette was fearfully watching the strange spectacle.

As the two figures passed beneath her window, Hette saw the Piper tilt his head slightly towards her house, the darkness beneath his hood impenetrable and yet she was certain he could see her, frozen at the window like the many dolls that she kept propped on shelves around her bedroom. She could not retract her gaze until the two of them had strolled, almost leisurely, down the entire length of the street, until even Frau Buckholtz's brilliant shine could no longer be spotted through the darkness.

Hette did not remember returning to her bed that night – perhaps she fell asleep right at the window and was placed back beneath the blankets by Nanny Elsie. Her mind was full of the otherworldly events that she had witnessed just hours before she woke. Had it really happened? Could it have just been a dream? It had seemed so real, so vivid, and yet so entirely peculiar that it couldn't have _possibly_ happened, could it? She did not mention it to Nanny Elsie or her parents when she came down to breakfast. She doubted Mama and Papa would have listened anyway, and Nanny Elsie would probably just discard the thought as a lonely child's fancy.

It was not until past the tenth hour that the doorbell rang, and Nanny Elsie rushed to answer it. Hette, who was drawing pictures at the kitchen tabletop, heard the excitable tones of Fraulein Everhart – a notorious gossip in the town – speak of a death in the town. Poor Frau Buckholtz was now in the hands of God, having passed away sometime the previous night. Oh, what a dreadful shame, Nanny Elsie lamented, she'd surely had many years ahead of her.

Hette froze, her pencil clutched in her tiny fist, her whole body aquiver. Could this explain the apparition she had witnessed? Could it have been the Angel of Death on his moonlit rounds, harvesting people's souls with the call of his pipe?

It would be another three years until Hette saw the Piper again, but in that time she never once forgot him. If she closed her eyes and concentrated hard, she could even still hear the haunting melody he had played to call Frau Buckholtz to him. It was three weeks after her seventh birthday that she found herself suddenly jerked from a peaceful slumber by what seemed like nothing at all. The night was starless and silent – even the cats and crickets seemed robbed of their after-hours chorus. Hette rose quietly and walked over to her window, pushing aside the gossamer curtain to clear her view to the street below.

There he was.

Exactly as she remembered – tall, faceless, skeletally slender, his fingers as thin and deft as a spider's legs around the silver flute held almost lazily against his side. A thrill of fear rushed through her and her heart began a countryman's jig against her ribs. She hid her face behind the curtain, exposing only her eye and a lock of long hair to the terrors of the night. She watched with fearful anticipation as the hooded Piper proceeded his sombre march along the cobblestones.

This time, he stopped only a short way from Hette's house – just across the street at number fifty-one. He paused, gazing up at the top left window, and slowly raised his hands to his lips. Hette, who had been expecting the haunting melody she'd heard those three years gone, was greatly surprised to hear a light, merry tune drift up to her window. It was the sort of song one might dance to at a gathering, warm and inviting. A glow spread through her chest at its sound.

This time, it was through the front door that the eerie silver light emerged – this one a lot smaller than when Hette had witnessed poor Frau Buckholtz's departure. With a shock she realised that, this time, the Piper had come for little Rosalind Appelbaum – the daughter of the town magistrate, who had only just learned to walk on her tiny feet. Hette could see her little face lit with babyish eagerness and curiosity and the mysterious stranger waiting outside her front gate.

The Piper removed one hand from his flute and held it out towards the tiny girl in a gesture of invitation. Rosalind giggled and tottered down off the front step towards this new friend. Hette wanted to cry out to her, warn her not to go – her parents adored her, she would be missed, she was so very young. But all she could do was watch as the Piper led the girl away up the street, her bare feet making no sound or mark upon the ground.

Hette's parents and beloved Nanny died the year she turned fourteen. A terrible storm of disease struck Hamelin as summer was rolling into the chill of autumn, taking all but two hundred men, women and children left alive. The city became a husk of its former sanctuary, and every night Hette was woken by the dreadful sound of the Piper making his ghostly rounds through the streets. One night, she even saw him leading a procession of thirty phantom children past the church tower, their souls all taken from their beds at the orphanage.

While Hette could not pretend that she and her parents had ever been close, she wept nonetheless for the loss of her family – especially that of Nanny Elsie, the only grown-up who had ever shown her genuine love and interest. That night, the music was louder than before, creeping into every crevice and crack in the wooden frame of Hette's house, as it called its newest victims to the Afterlife. The authorities did not yet know of the deaths of Herr Rosenberg and his wife, nor of Nanny Elsie, and Hette was not quite yet ready to part from the house she had called home for more than a decade. She wondered for how long she could pretend that nothing was wrong – to simply shut herself away in this lonely house.

The music grew to such a pitch that she felt forced to clamp her pillow over her head, her eyes screw tight against the bright silver light now glowing through the gap beneath her bedroom door. She thought how pleasant it must be to simply walk out of this life as easily as through an open door – to leave behind the parents who'd never wanted her, the children who laughed at her games, the fear of when she would next hear the Piper's call for some other poor departed soul.

Hette kicked her coverlet off with such enthusiasm she sent it crumpling to the floor. The glow of her parents' spirits was fading now – reduced to naught but a faint light reflected from the street below onto the glass in her window-pane. She ran as fast as her legs – still short for her age – could carry her down the stairs to the entrance corridor. The door was not locked, and she all but threw it open in a desperate attempt to reach the silver outline of Nanny Elsie, down joining the spectral parade that was slowly marching towards the mountains to the north of town.

Hette cried out for her, begged her to stop, but to no avail. For as she reached to touch the arm of her guardian, her fingers simply passed through like smoke. Nanny Elsie did not even turn to look at the child so desperately trying to pull her back to the mortal world. Hette fought her way to the front of the procession, trying her hardest not to step through any of the silver figures – it felt wrong, somehow. The Piper was some metres ahead, his melody a concoction of jigs, waltzes, and those ghostly words that beckoned, _"Come. . . follow. . . follow. . ."_

He did not seem to hear Hette's pleas for him to stop, but she refused to give up. She tried to grab hold of his robed arm, but each time she drew nearer to him, something made her pull back. To touch him would be. . . impossible. She begged for his mercy, for if he would not return her Nanny to her, then to take her with them, wherever it was they were leaving for.

It was not until they reached the foot of the Weserbergland mountains that the Piper finally ceased his playing. He stood to one side as, one by one, the ghostly figures stepped through the rock at the the foot of the mountain. Hette could only watch in desperate vain as both her parents, then Nanny Elsie, departed the mortal plane without so much as a backward glance at what they were leaving behind. As the last child stepped through into whatever Afterlife awaited them, the Piper turned his shrouded face to Hette and spoke:

"_Death may have an alluring melody, child. But now is not your time. . ."_

The sickness passed with the wind, but it was a good many years before Hamelin became a town in which one might consider making a home. Hette used some money her parents had put aside to run the family house, and began calling herself Henrietta again (but since we know her best as Hette, I believe she may forgive us that request). She was growing into a beautiful young woman, and at seventeen years old, she received a proposal from a handsome young man named Claus Zingsheim. He was not from high standing – his father own a vegetable stall at the market, but Hette found herself growing incredibly fond of him, and so she accepted his offer of marriage with gladness in her heart.

They were wed within the six months, in the sight of God at the church, and it was not long before Hette found herself full with child. For the first time in many years, she considered herself happy. That was, until the day came for her child to be born. A terrifying sea of blood announced the child's early arrival, and it was with great sorrow and pain in her heart that Hette and Claus buried their infant son in the graveyard of the church.

That night, Hette was already awake when the Piper came, seated in a wicker chair in the front yard, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. This time, she saw her baby boy in the arms of the Piper himself, wrapped in the swaddling clothes in which he had been buried that day. For the second time, she implored, pleaded, _begged_ for the Piper to return her lost loved one to her. When he did not reply, she instead demanded he take her life, for she no longer wished it for herself. But all he would say was:

"_Now is not your time. . ."_

Claus wanted to move away from Hamelin after the burial, but Hette, despite the painful memories, wished to stay. The house was her own, and she had made a respectable name for herself within the town. Although they tried many times for another child, they could not conceive. Hette often thought Claus regretted requesting her for his wife, though he would deny this at every turn, of course.

For many years they lived alone in the Rosenberg house, filling that space their son had left with friends and music and as much merriment as Claus could give his darling wife. While she loved him desperately and appreciated his attempts to give her the full and happy life she had so longed for as a child, Hette often found herself walking, alone, up to the mountains to place her hands upon the unyielding stone.

Hette and Claus lived together for forty years, almost two lifetimes for some people of that time. The evening that Claus left her, Hette sat by his bedside and wept, his cold hand clasped in both of hers. Before night fell, she walked to the mountainside where she knew the Piper would be taking her husband, and again she would beg for him to take her with him.

"_Now is not your time. . ."_ he simply said.

Filled with fury and despair, Hette locked herself away in her chambers for many days, neither sleeping nor eating. In her mind she concocting many schemes in which she might persuade the Piper to take her into that world beyond the mountains. It was on the fourth day that the realisation came to her – that, despite her grief, Claus would never have wished for his death to cause such a wound in Hette's spirit. He would wish for her to go on, to find a way, any way, to be happy.

Hette re-designed her house into an orphanage – a place of happiness and merriment for the lost and lonely children of the town, as she had once been. She became a mother and a friend to all of them, and they became sons and daughters to her – that which she could never have had herself was now hers in handfuls. The joy it brought her filled her heart and soul with such light that she almost never thought of the Piper and his dark melodies.

The night was warm and soft – the moon a crescent of liquid silver in the sky, surrounded by the stars like a mother nursing her children. It was on that night, so many years ago – longer than you or I or anyone can remember, that the Piper finally came for Henrietta Adelaide Rosenberg, at the grand age of eighty-five. His music floated through the air to her open bedroom window, and she woke as if from the most beautiful dream. The music was sweet and full of joy, and made her feel light as swansdown, in both heart and body. Her body was aglow with the light of her soul as she stepped from the body that bound her to the mortal plane, and stepped out into the night to join the Piper. There were no other deaths that midnight, and it was in silence that Hette and her Piper walked the long road out of Hamelin, to the face of the mountain through which she knew her sorrows would be rewarded.

"_I bid you welcome to my kingdom, child,"_ the Piper said, in his voice that was music and light, dark as the sky and clear as the moon. _"You, who have walked with Death, and found Death wanting. You, who have brought joy from sadness, and brought such joy to so many others."_

He stepped aside and, with a soft smile on her lips, Hette stepped through, into the mountain.

What she found there, even I cannot say. I can only hope she found happiness. Perhaps one day, when the Piper comes playing his melody for you, you might ask her yourself.


End file.
